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To bring or lead back to any former place or condition. [Obs.] And to his brother's house reduced his wife. Chapman. The sheep must of necessity be scattered, unless the great Shephered of souls oppose, or some of his delegates reduce and direct us. Evelyn.

Reduction. Milton.

Tending to reduce. -- n.

One who, or that which, reduces.

To cast down or reduce low or lower, as in rank, office, condition in life, or estimation of worthiness; to depress; to humble; to degrade. Whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased. Luke xiv. ll.

To bring down or reduce from a higher to a lower state, number, or degree; to lessen; to diminish; to contract; to moderate; toto cut short; as, to abate a demand; to abate pride, zeal, hope. His eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated. Deut. xxxiv. 7.

To make briefer; to shorten; to abridge; to reduce by contraction or omission, especially of words written or spoken. It is one thing to abbreviate by contracting, another by cutting off. Bacon.

The form to which a word or phrase is reduced by contraction and omission; a letter or letters, standing for a word or phrase of which they are a part; as, Gen. for Genesis; U.S.A. for United States of America.

chalk, etc.; also a substance e. g., iodine) which acts on the absorbent vessels so as to reduce enlarged and indurated parts.

To put in order; to regulate, or reduce to system. Adjusting the orthography. Johnson.

To assess or reduce, as an arbitrary penalty or amercement, to a certain and reasonable sum. Amercements . . . were affeered by the judges. Blackstone.

To reduce to a fine powder. [Obs.] Johnson.

To perform by algebra; to reduce to algebraic form.

To reduce the purity of by mixing with a less valuable substance; as, to alloy gold with silver or copper, or silver with copper.

To reduce to anarchy.

To render animal or sentient; to reduce to the state of a lower animal; to sensualize. The unconscious irony of the Epicurean poet on the animalizing tendency of his own philosophy. Coleridge.

To reduce to nothing or nonexistence; to destroy the existence of; to cause to cease to be. It impossible for any body to be utterly annihilated. Bacon.

To reduce to nothing; to obliterate. Light, the prime work of God, to me's extinct. And all her various objects of delight Annulled. Milton.

To weaken; to enfeeble; to reduce; as, an old appalled wight. [Obs.] Chaucer. Whine, of its own nature, will not congeal and freeze, only it will lose the strength, and become appalled in extremity of cold. Holland.

To make quiet; to calm; to reduce to a state of peace; to still; to pacify; to dispel (anger or hatred); as, to appease the tumult of the ocean, or of the passions; to appease hunger or thirst.